The reality we must accept in free to play gaming is that the majority of people who install or sign up for a game will never spend a cent on it.The amount can vary depending on the genre, target audience of your game as well as the platform your game is published on.

This naturally leads to ask what is the magic ingredient that turns players into paying users. While your game design knowledge will tell you what works in theory, you will still need to find out what works for your game and what doesn’t.

In this post we will show you:

1. Which metrics you can look at
2. How you can segment and filter your users to understand what drives your payers.

Getting started with game analytics can be a daunting task for an aspiring game developer. The importance of using analytics to improve games is widely stressed on games conventions and in journals and blogs but it’s seldom discussed how that topic can be approached by starters.

Lots of game developers start the journey without knowing how to actually benefit from analytics. In this post we will answer some typical questions and make suggestions on things you should be looking at first after a game launch to get actual insights from using analytics. Continue Reading →

Since we started HoneyTracks barely 4 years ago, our vision has been to provide game companies with a strong set of analytics solutions that will help them understand their audience, their game performance and help them increase their monetization through greater knowledge. We hunkered down and built a state-of-the-art platform from scratch, all the while bootstrapping the company. Today we are proud to announce the next chapter in HoneyTracks’ history as we have been acquired by iQU, an insight-driven cross-platform games marketing based in Haarlem, The Netherlands.

iQU has established itself as one of the leading independent games-vertical performance marketing specialist for AAA+/AA games developers, and is one of the principal marketing partners for Electronic Arts, Wargaming and Kabam.

Integrated Big-Data Marketing Solutions For All Game Developers

Haarlem (The Netherlands) and Munich (Germany), 12 August 2014 – iQU and HoneyTracks announced today that they have reached an agreement for iQU to acquire HoneyTracks for an undisclosed sum.

iQU’s acquisition of HoneyTracks reinforces its commitment to provide game developers and publishers with a complete package of real-time solutions across the entire acquisition, retention and monetization (ARM)-funnel. iQU can now provide clients with a comprehensive overview of a player’s entire journey in real-time, starting with identifying a new player through to their point of game entry and their complete game lifecycle. The company will now be able to provide an understanding of how each key component, such as player cohorts, virtual goods and level progression, within a game is performing across all channels and, by definition, having a direct positive impact on client’s marketing ROI and portfolio value. The clients will be able to benefit tremendously from enhanced, targeted RTB acquisition campaigns, increased in-game events and higher player engagement.

In the second part of our series of interviews with key players of the games industry, we are happy to talk to Indie Advisor Andrè Bernhardt from Berlin. His mission is to help (small) developers to find publishers and vice versa.

Typically more than 70% of revenues in free to play games are generated through in-app purchases, regardless of other monetization options like in-game advertising or hybrid-models with subscription et al. So it’s vital for your success to understand what makes people spend money in your game.

Hence today we are starting our new series “Optimizing game monetization”.